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Do you want to be here?

Acts 19:32 “The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.”

The city is in riot mode. It is getting to the point of no return until something really bad happens to satisfy a bloodthirsty crowd. But hold on! Luke says most of the people didn’t know why they were there! They were caught up in the shouting and the pushing and shoving about something they really didn’t know anything about. Such is the boredom of life at times that you can be involved in an argument or a campaign and you don’t know anything about.

Several years ago, pastoring a Church in Dewsbury, in the north of England, I found myself one evening in a similar situation but it wasn’t because I was bored! I was very involved in bringing the churches together in that town which at that time was unique within the UK as being the sole town which only had 2 religions, Christianity and Islam. It was at the time of the Iraq war and one evening I was attending a meeting of ministers and Imams regarding how we would keep peace in the town etc. Don’t ask me how because I do not know. But that evening I returned home as Chairman of the ‘Stop the War’ campaign! Did I know anything about the war? NO. Did I want to be the Chairman? NO. I resigned the next week as the shortest serving chair of Stop the War.

How often we can get caught up in some group, some meeting, some campaign, some argument and we don’t know how we got there. We don’t know the facts. We appear an expert but we know less than a novice. And the truth is we would prefer not to be here. More needs to be done in making sure we are where we want to be and we are not coerced into being and doing and saying what we are not truly supporting.